Hollow Men
by The Moss Stomper
Summary: Rude speaks less. Reno seems to care less with each day that passes. Tseng has less and less control of his temper. Even Turks grieve. [Follows the Turks after the end of BC up until Sector 7; weeks brimming with mounting desperation and disillusionment. Angst ahoy.]


**A/N** : This one-shot deals with the aftermath of Before Crisis from the Turks' point of view. It's not necessary to have played/watched BC to follow this story, but if you want to know more about the context, you can look up for example "Before Crisis: All You Need To Know" (episodes 23 and 24 are the most relevant ones for this story).

This is also a prequel of sorts to _The Unwelcome Guest_. The chance meeting at the end of chapter 5 takes place a few days after this story.

* * *

 **Hollow Men**

* * *

Reno sits in front of Tseng's desk; jacket hanging open, no tie, the top two buttons of his shirt undone. It's as close to being in uniform as Reno gets. It's as close to being out of it as Tseng allows.

"Woulda thought you'd taken the chief's office by now. It's been _days_ , y'know."

Two days, to be exact. Long enough for Tseng to be concerned. Long enough for him to order Reno to report in.

Long enough for him to be relieved when Reno obeyed the order.

"There has been no official promotion," Tseng says. "We are still under investigation."

"You killed the fuckin' _chief_. What more do they want?"

The smirk vanishes as Reno spits it out. Tseng keeps his face blank; this is what he's been expecting ever since Reno stalked into his office.

He has seen it in his mind's eye for two days; that final view as he looked out the back of the truck. Rude standing as silent as ever, hiding behind his dark shades but his whole body visibly shaking. Reno on his knees in badlands dirt, staring into nothing with mouth and eyes wide open. Speechless for once, reeling from the presumed betrayal.

Tseng still sees the accusation in Reno's eyes, sees it crystallized into a brittle core.

It's not the first time he questions his decision to leave them out of the loop.

"What, you can't even tell me that much?" Reno snaps. "That blond son of a bitch got you on a fuckin' leash now?"

Tseng knows it's the pain talking, so he quells the sudden swell of anger. He knows where it comes from.

So Tseng comes clean. He tells Reno all about the ploy Rufus Shinra suggested him in private, tells him how they faked the chief's death to save the rest of the Turks. Tells him how they kept it a secret from everyone else.

Reno knocks over his chair on the way out and slams the door shut behind him.

* * *

Two days later Reno is in Tseng's office again. He slouches in the same chair, but there seems to be less of him now. No jokes, no small talk. Nothing but stifling silence.

Rude has pulled up another chair next to his partner. Behind his desk, Tseng stands ramrod-straight as he addresses the shreds of his department.

"I will make this brief. As of today, the Department of Administrative Research is under suspension. No date has yet been set for the hearing, but I expect it to be a matter of weeks."

Two silent seconds pass.

"It was all for _nothin'_?"

His hunched shoulders, his glare, the way he spits out his words; everything about Reno oozes bitterness. The chief would have signed him up for a psych evaluation by now. Given what Reno thinks of those, he should be thankful Tseng is in charge. Instead he sits there and scowls like the petulant brat Tseng dragged out of the slums all those years ago.

Tseng sets his jaw and begins to speak.

"Suspension before the hearing is the usual protocol–"

"Protocol? You think those fuckers up there give a rat's ass about _protocol_? They're gonna _end_ us, and there's nothin' some spoiled little Shinra prince can–"

Tseng knows it's the pain talking, but for one dizzying second he doesn't care.

"Shut your mouth and sit down!"

Rude flinches. Reno freezes halfway out of his chair. As the seconds tick by, his struggle becomes more and more evident in every twitch of his fingers, of the muscles in his jaw. His body is coiled tight, poised to leap straight over the desk between them.

Tseng keeps his hands folded behind his back, and keeps Reno fixed with a steady stare.

With a huff, Reno drops down. He throws his arms across his chest and glowers in fuming silence.

Tseng allows himself a deep breath.

"As part of that protocol, you will now hand in all Shinra-issued weapons."

Rude obeys without a word. He hasn't said a thing since Tseng told him the truth about Veld's faked execution.

Reno watches Rude place his sidearm on the desk, then shoots to his feet and stomps out. When he returns, he slams down his pistol on the table. The mag rod he slaps down next to it is a little too short, the handle too light in color. He meets Tseng's gaze with a steely one of his own and his mouth twists into a mockery of a smile. Daring him to call him out on it.

"I will call you when the situation changes," Tseng says. "Dismissed."

He sounds like Veld, Tseng realizes, and for a moment he feels his composure falter. Rude leaves, silent as the grave. Reno glares, and whirls out of the room like a seething storm.

* * *

With his impeccable suit in bright white, his ten-thousand-gil watch and haughty smile, Rufus Shinra looks every inch the heir of the most powerful company on the Planet. He's taking his time leafing through a report from the Weapons Department, detailing their latest project proposals.

Across the table sits Scarlet, the executive of that department, wrapped in a slinky red dress that reveals more than it conceals. She purrs, smiles, toys with a loose strand of her hair – until Rufus happens to look down. That's when she levels her icy blue glare at Tseng.

The dark suit Tseng wears is not a Turk uniform. Like the other Turks, he is officially suspended. Ostensibly, he's at the meeting as an invited expert – an invitation Tseng can't refuse, and one that Scarlet can't deny Rufus Shinra, Vice President of the company that employs her.

More than once she has called for the disbandment of the Turks, even their execution, and Tseng knows she's one of the driving forces behind the current investigation. What Scarlet can't control, she wants to obliterate.

That is what Rufus's invitation is all about. Tseng knows better than to delude himself with other possibilities. He's only here to prove a point. That's why he stands behind Rufus Shinra's chair; one step back and two to the right. Like the silent threat he isn't supposed to be.

But as Rufus Shinra takes liberties with "his" Turks, so Tseng takes liberties of his own. He doesn't act the bodyguard, doesn't watch the security, or the assistants, or the technicians in Scarlet's entourage. He doesn't watch the woman herself, or the body she so painstakingly puts on display.

Instead he watches Rufus's slim fingers as they trace lines of text in the report. He watches them push back that lock of flaxen hair that never stays of out Rufus's face for long. He watches them brush that narrow bottom lip, curved ever so slightly into a mocking smile.

Tseng watches, and wonders if he's let himself be swayed into making the biggest mistake of his life.

* * *

The first morning after they're reinstated, Reno is in the office when Tseng arrives. He stands at Cissnei's desk, holding something in his hands. He doesn't look up when Tseng steps up beside him.

"Guess where this was?" Reno raises the mug he's holding – _I shoot people_ says the text above a picture of an old-fashioned camera – and taps a finger on the desk. "Right here. Can you believe it? Ciss would never leave her mug that close to the edge."

He sets it down carefully next to the monitor, far from any edges.

"Fuckin' cleaners, man. I mean, just look at that." Reno points at Freyra's desk. "The Claw's on the right side of the keyboard. You ever see Frou-Frou keep that on the right?"

It's a hollowed-out claw, or maybe a horn, pitch black and propped up by a golden frame. A trophy from some monstrosity she hunted down herself, stuffed full of promotional pens from Shinra's PR department.

"I didn't realize she used it, considering how often I had to hound her to sign her reports."

"Yeah, she ain't much for paperwork either."

Tseng doesn't point out the slip in tense, but Reno's chuckle catches in his throat and dies too soon. He swallows and runs his fingers along the edge of Cissnei's desk.

"You ever wonder if maybe... maybe some of 'em..."

He looks up at Tseng, and Tseng thinks of the teenage boy he brought to Veld's attention a decade ago. Bitter, lost, malleable Reno, whom he molded over the years like Veld had molded him; sometimes harshly, sometimes brutally, but always with a purpose in mind. Reno, whom he trained into a lethal weapon to secure a brighter future, because a brighter future for the company was a brighter future for them all.

The vision of that future had beamed at Tseng across oceans, made him spurn the customs and traditions of his country of birth, like they had spurned him. That vision had once burned bright like the sun, above the city that rose above all others.

It is no longer the beacon it once was. Some days, Tseng isn't sure he sees it at all. Perhaps as the smog slowly covered the sky of Midgar, so too did Tseng's eyes cloud over.

He remembers glimpsing it again as he pointed his gun at Veld. It had remained with him after the shots had been fired, after he had climbed into the back of the truck and rolled away from the site of his apparent betrayal. It was faint, but glowed stronger by the minute... and then it died in the blinding flash of Zirconiade's demise, with all those who would have become his Turks.

Tseng has tried the usual channels, the usual contacts. Ever since that day, he's waited for a secret sign, an encrypted message. Anything.

He's received nothing.

Would he be standing in an empty office if the three of them had joined their comrades instead? If he had made a different choice?

Without his permission, Tseng's memories dart to the day before. _Don't misunderstand. I didn't do it for your sake._ Words delivered with a faint smile and punctuated by a flick of flaxen hair; words that sear like bullets from a gun.

"The infantry scoured what's left of Sector 6. They found nothing."

Reno's expectant face crumples.

"I know, but–"

"They're _dead_. You're not, and you have a job to do. Focus on the mission."

Tseng spits it out quickly, and shuts out the regret before it has a chance to creep in. He can't afford to bend or break. None of them can afford to wallow when three Turks must do the work of fifteen.

Reno averts his face. His shoulders rise and his fingers dig into Cissnei's desk.

Tseng lets his hands fall to his sides as he watches, unfurled but ready. None of them can afford to break, but that doesn't mean they won't.

When Reno turns back, his mouth is set in a sneer.

"Later, boss man." He raps his fingers against the desk. "Gotta hunt down a bunch of terrorist assholes, yo."

His stooped shoulders belie the swagger in his voice as he leaves. Tseng watches him until the door clicks closed, then lets his muscles uncoil. His harshness was a necessity, he tells himself. Reno didn't break, and is now stronger for it.

He heads to his office, walking through the rows of abandoned desks. By Freyra's desk he pauses, and moves her clawed monstrosity to the left.

* * *

"Rude."

The bald man looks up from his desk, a sheaf of papers in his hand. His own paperwork or Reno's; Tseng doesn't know which. It disturbs him to realize he doesn't care, either.

"You know some of Cissnei's contacts, don't you?"

Rude inclines his head. Tseng chooses to read it as a nod.

"Look them up, see if they'll talk to you instead. She was looking into known members of this neo-AVALANCHE group, and we need to know what she knew. Check with Emma's sister, too. She might have contacts in Wall Market."

Rude looks at him, his jaw working but otherwise still. Just as Tseng's patience reaches its frayed end, Rude gives one sharp nod.

The door to the Turk offices bangs open.

"Yo! How's it hangin', dudes?"

Reno saunters in like he owns the place. Tseng grits his teeth and takes his hand off the pistol grip under his jacket, but his muscles remain tight.

"Don't do that again."

"Or what?" Reno's mouth is fixed in a faint sneer. "You'll suspend me again? Take on a bunch of terrorists alone?"

Tseng frowns, but before he can decide on a disciplinary action he catches the look on Rude's face as Reno passes him. The bald man wrinkles his nose, frowns, and gets up. Reno pays him no mind. He flops down at his desk with little grace, and Tseng catches a whiff of cigarette smoke.

Rude heads to the whiteboard that covers half of the wall opposite Tseng's office. The top right corner is covered by a sticker, roughly the size of their standard folders. The paper has yellowed with age, but the childishly puffed letters still declare their brightly colored messages.

 _EVERYONE LOVES A QUITTER  
Let's work together to be smoke-free!_

Below it is a line of text in black marker pen; Tseng recognizes Cissnei's handwriting.

 _Rounds Reno owes us on Friday:_

Beneath that is a stick-figure Reno trampling a giant cigarette.

It's been up there for almost two years; long enough for it to turn into part of the scenery. Tseng knows Reno hasn't touched a single cigarette for most of that time, but he wanted to keep the tally on the whiteboard. A daily reminder, and perhaps a testament to his triumph.

Or that's what it once was. A neat row of four lines have appeared between Cissnei's writing and little stick-figure Reno. Rude picks up a marker and adds a fifth line across them.

Reno looks up at the squeak of marker on plastic. With a dry huff of a chuckle, he shakes his head.

"Sorry, buddy, but it ain't much of price to pay when it's just you I gotta buy a drink for."

"You're giving up?"

They are the first words Tseng has heard from Rude's mouth since their reinstatement.

Reno goes still. When his mocking smile widens, there's an edge gleaming in his eyes.

"Why the hell not? Everybody loves a quitter. Says so right there, yo."

Rude stands by the board, the marker pen squeezed in his hand, and stares at his partner. Reno doesn't even blink.

"What? Got somethin' to say to me?"

Rude stares, silently.

Reno scoffs and swirls his chair around, turning his back on Rude.

Rude keeps staring for a few moments longer. He sets the marker down, turns, and leaves. When the door clicks shut, Tseng sees the crooked smile vanish from Reno's face.

The next morning, the whiteboard is wiped clean and only a patchy scab remains of the sticker.

* * *

It's past eight in the evening when Tseng steps out of his office. He does not expect to find Reno at his desk, tapping away at his keyboard.

"Why are you still here?"

Reno glances up and shrugs.

"Rude wasn't in the mood for drinks."

"That doesn't answer my question."

His hands go still over the keyboard.

"It's poker night," he mumbles, staring at them.

Tseng breathes out a quiet sigh.

"Pretty much the only reason one of the gang might skip poker night, besides bein' on the job of course, was if they had paperwork to finish before mornin'." The chair creaks softly as Reno shifts. "So, I figured that if I sit here, doin' up my paperwork... it'd..."

He wets his lips, takes an unsteady breath. He pins on a smile, slouches back in the chair and brings it around to face Tseng.

"But hey, paperwork sucks, so... Got any plans tonight?"

"Plans?"

"Wanna grab a drink?"

"No, thanks."

"Somethin' to eat? Hang out, watch a movie?"

Tseng feels a swell of irritation. Reno yaps at him like a stray hoping for a bone. Expecting Tseng to fix something that can't be fixed.

"I'm going home. So should you."

"Tseng, c'mon. What's so bad about hangin' out with a friendly face?"

Tseng shakes his head as he reaches out to wipe a speck of dust off the nearest monitor.

"We are not 'friends'. I'm your superior."

He has no trouble making it sound convincing. He's repeated it in his own head enough times.

Reno is quiet a while.

"How about you look me straight in the eye when you tell me that?"

Tseng realizes he's still running his fingers along the monitor. He lowers his hand, clasps them both behind his back.

"I'm your handler now. Maybe the next time I look you straight in the eye, I'm sending you on a suicide mission."

"You think I fuckin' care?"

Tseng finally looks up.

"No. You don't."

Just for a fraction of a second, he slips. _You_ don't. The emphasis is faint, but he can hear it.

Reno stares at him. He hears it, too.

Tseng has licked boots and called in favors for weeks, groveled left and right to keep the Turks – _his_ Turks – alive. When he sees Reno turn away from him and _scoff_ in response to his admission, another strand of his fraying self-control snaps.

"We're Turks," he spits. "I know what that means. I'm not so sure you do anymore."

Reno whips his head right back around.

"The fuck's that s'posed to mean?"

"It means it's high time you quit moping around the fucking office like some melodramatic teen and start acting like the Turk you _claim_ to be!"

Reno flinches. His knuckles are white on the armrests of his chair. His face has gone white, too, but it's not in rage. It's humiliation Tseng sees in him, humiliation and hurt; and suddenly he wishes he could turn back time to the day before, to the month before, to _years_ before.

"Go home," Tseng says out loud as he turns on his heel to leave, biting off the words. "Find something better to do."

Reno is still sitting by his desk, still and quiet, when the office door clicks shut behind Tseng's back.

The next morning when Tseng enters the office, Reno sits in the same spot, his body arranged in the exact same pose.

"Don't worry, boss man," he says and grins like a skull. "I found somethin' better to do."

Tseng does not ask about the split lip, or the eye that blooms purple and ugly black, all the way down to the tattooed curve on Reno's face. He does not mention the unironed shirt, or the extra button that has been left open at the top. He walks into his office and shuts the door behind him.

* * *

It's well past nightfall when Tseng returns, from a recon mission below plate that was equal parts fruitless and frustrating. The last thing he wants to see is Reno at his desk, with half a bottle of whisky in one hand and a lit cigarette in the other.

"What the _hell_ are you doing?"

Reno glowers at his whisky and doesn't reply. The silence is as thick and smothering as the smoky haze from his cigarettes.

Tseng strides over to Reno's desk and snatches the bottle from his hand.

"The city is under attack," he growls. "I need you sober and ready!"

He drops the bottle in the trash. Reno jumps up with more speed than coordination.

"Maybe you wouldn't if you'd picked one of us instead of _him_ ," he spits. "Maybe we wouldn't all be fuckin' _dead_."

 _He knows_ is Tseng's first thought, followed by a twist of fear. _Of course he does_ is his second, followed by a surge of anger. Reno reads people like people read books, but he has _no fucking business_ reading Tseng.

 _He's right_ comes third, and that's the thought that brings the blind fury.

"You're spouting nonsense," Tseng hisses with a frigid calm. "Go home, and sober the hell up."

"Nonsense, huh? You think I haven't seen you follow him around like a horny goat? 'Cause _he_ sure has, I fuckin' guarantee it. You ever see him fuckin' _care_?"

Reno's face is twisted up with rage and defiance. Just one push and he'll explode; Tseng can see that clear as day.

Tseng lines up a whole battery of shots.

"What makes you think _I_ care about your drivel? Look at yourself. You've turned into a drunk and a slob, who's pathetic enough to–"

Reno springs on him, snarling. Tseng dodges the first swing at the side of his head, and blocks the second jab to his neck. When the third comes, Tseng sees his chance. With his right, Reno lands a swift punch in Tseng's gut, but he is prepared, his abs clenched tight. He takes the hit, and as Reno draws back, Tseng makes a grab for his wrist. Even with too many drinks in him Reno is fast enough not to get caught, but his balance is off. As he wastes two precious seconds on flailing, Tseng launches into Reno and knocks him flat. Reno's quick to roll over and away, but before he can get back on his feet, Tseng grabs his right arm and wrenches it up behind his back.

A bullet shattered that shoulder years ago, and Tseng knows it never healed quite right. Reno hollers and curses, but to Tseng's surprise he doesn't stop struggling.

"Fuckin' traitor! Did you ever give a shit about any of us, ya heartless son of a bitch?"

Tseng knows it's the pain talking, and for several liberating seconds he doesn't care. He presses his knee down on the small of Reno's back to keep him still and twists harder.

Reno screams. He finally goes limp and pounds the floor with his free hand. Tseng stops pushing, but doesn't let go.

"You're right. I _am_ a heartless son of a bitch," he hisses in Reno's ear. "I'm exactly the Turk everyone thinks I am. Consider that the next time you feel like opening your big foolish mouth."

Tseng gets up, leaving Reno panting and squirming on the floor. He doesn't look back as he leaves.

* * *

The moment Tseng closes his office door behind him, he's on edge. It's a prickling in his neck, a nagging feeling that something's _off_. It only intensifies as he passes the first row of desks. By the second, he stops and looks around.

Freyra's claw is missing, he realizes. So is Cissnei's mug, and Tyco's snow globe. Almost every desk is missing something.

Tseng spots a sliver of light beneath the break room door. He approaches quietly, pushes it open with one hand on the handle and the other on the grip of his gun.

Reno slouches by the round table in the middle of the room, one arm folded over the back of his chair. The claw, the mug, the snow globe, and half a dozen other personal knickknacks form a semicircle on the table. Inside the broken ring lies a pistol and a plastic bag with pills.

"Reno?"

"Hey, boss man."

He doesn't look up. In the anemic light from a single bulb above the table, his skin looks sallow. His cheeks and chin are mottled with faint stubble.

"Here at this hour again?"

A tired nod is all Tseng gets.

"If you plan to finish your paperwork tonight, I suggest sitting at your desk instead."

"Yeah, well..." Reno shifts, tilts his face away. "That hasn't worked out so well lately."

Tseng tightens his jaw, drops his gaze. He stares at the pills, then steps up to the table and picks them up. About twenty of them all in all, small and round and white. They could be painkillers. They could be uppers, downers. They could be anything.

"Is there something I should know?"

Reno looks up. His goggles perch on his forehead as usual, but the hair they keep out of his face is stringy and gleams dully in the lamplight. Tseng wonders when he last used a comb.

"They ain't mine."

Tseng fixes him with a stare. Reno shifts his weight again and huffs.

"That punk I had a lil' chat with this mornin'? They're his."

A street dealer from Sector 7, Tseng recalls. The information Reno had beaten out of him was the break their investigation sorely needed, and just in the nick of time. It had been a hectic day of phone calls to organize evacuations and contingency plans, a frantic scramble to put the right people in the right places; all to save Reactor 5 from another attack by the AVALANCHE terrorists that very night.

And then the President had vetoed their operation, opting for something ostentatious and far too risky instead – a plan courtesy of Heidegger and Scarlet. The result? Another crippled reactor, another score of casualties, and terrorists still on the loose.

Tseng's grip on the bag tightens.

"Then you should have turned them over at the station when you booked the offender."

"Guess I forgot."

Reno's eyelids droop in carefully crafted nonchalance, and his mouth is curved into something that is, and isn't, a smile. He isn't even trying to fake innocence.

Not that Reno has ever been innocent. The teenage punk Tseng had met a decade ago had been a young, wounded thing hiding behind a brittle shell of bravado, but even then he hadn't seen innocence in those bright, watchful eyes. There was always a spark of life, though; an unbeatable stubbornness that had kept him alive through his years below the plate.

Tseng hasn't seen that spark for weeks.

"And the gun?" The words feel odd as they come out of his mouth.

"Needs a clean, yo."

There is only a slight pause before Reno's reply, but it's enough. Tseng sets down the pills on the other side of the table, and fetches the cleaning kit and a newspaper from the cupboard by the wall. He spreads the newspaper near Reno's array of trinkets, pulls out a chair and sits down. He lifts his jacket and takes out his own pistol.

He glances up as he clicks out the magazine. Reno is watching him.

"Mine needs a clean, too," Tseng says.

Soft, metallic clinks fill the room as he removes the round in the chamber, checks the barrel, and strips the gun. The sound is soothing, almost meditative in its simplicity.

"Three of us." Reno's voice is quiet. He's looking at the knickknacks on the table now, and shakes his head in slow-motion. "Still can't fuckin' believe it."

Tseng focuses on the pieces of his weapon, on the motions of his familiar ritual. It keeps his mind clear and his voice calm.

"They did what they had to do to finish the mission. That's what we will do, too."

"No matter what it takes," Reno mumbles.

His eyes are bloodshot, rimmed with red. They move in a tired path from one item to another on the table, pausing at each one. He reaches the end, then begins shaking with a mirthless, soundless laugh.

"Y'know what else I can't believe? That after everythin' they've done to try and kill us off, they still expect us to clean up their shit."

It's a different "they" now; it's clear from the way Reno spits it out. Whether it's Shinra as a whole, the President and his executives, or just Heidegger and Scarlet; Tseng doesn't know.

"We finish the mission," Tseng repeats. "It's what we do."

"You a fuckin' parrot now?"

He may be impudent, but Reno's voice lacks defiance and he rubs his eyes as he speaks. Tseng gives him an even stare. Reno doesn't even seem to notice it.

"The old man is losin' it, ain't he?" His voice is barely above a whisper. "All that Promised Land bullshit? Reeve says nobody even listens if he tries to talk about rebuilding sector six. And now this stupid fuckin' stunt at the reactor..."

"You should be careful with talk like that around HQ. You never know when a Turk is listening."

Reno barks out a hollow laugh that goes on for too long. He lolls his head backwards and stares up at the ceiling.

"Fuck my life."

Tseng allows himself to silently agree.

* * *

Tseng is rereading the mission brief on his desk. It's sloppily written, vague on the details, but its message comes through loud and clear.

It chills him to the bone.

Assassination is one thing. It's the removal of a problem in a precise, efficient manner – and often the lesser evil, considering all potential outcomes.

There's nothing precise or efficient about this.

He can get the number for the plate itself with a phone call. With a few more, he can probably find someone willing to give him an estimate for the slums below, bracketed by best-case and worst-case.

Tseng does neither. He doesn't need a number to know this falls easily within the definition of mass murder.

"You called, boss?"

Reno stands in the doorway. His shoulders sag in a now-permanent hunch, but he's clean-shaven and his suit is fresh enough not to be wrinkled. It's a significant improvement from the night before.

"We have a new mission. Orders from above."

"Shoot," Reno says as he wanders in.

"We are to take out AVALANCHE's base of operations."

The chair scrapes against the floor as Reno slumps down in it.

"That 7th Heaven place? What's the plan? Explosives?"

Tseng's mouth feels dry.

"Yes... on the support pillar of Sector 7. We will crush them under the plate."

Reno goes still, frozen right in the middle of a change of posture. He slowly sets down the leg he was raising.

"This a joke? 'Cause if it is, it's a real shitty one."

"The board wants this threat dealt with once and for all."

Reno's mouth hangs open. As he stares into Tseng's face, the attitude he was flaunting peels off and vanishes.

"The hell kinda bullshit is this? This neo-AVALANCHE group is, what, half a dozen people? We know who they are now, where they are. Even with just the three of us, we can round 'em up in a few days. A week, tops!"

"We don't have a week. We have two days."

Reno opens his mouth, closes it again. His head sinks a tad lower, his shoulders droop a tad more. He sags at Tseng's desk like a man three times his age.

"Heidegger, huh?"

Tseng nods once. Reno scoffs.

"Fuckin' knew it."

Tseng counts the ticks of the clock. It's almost a minute before Reno clears his throat.

"What's the plan for evac?"

"There is no evac."

The silence only lasts a few seconds this time.

"Fuckin' hell. I knew Shinra don't give a shit about anyone below, but I would've thought..."

Reno trails off, swallows. He glances over his shoulder and out through the doorway. Tseng has never allowed his office door to remain open during a briefing before, but now it gapes wide, showing a silent room with empty desks.

Reno turns back to Tseng with a wheeze of a laugh.

"Yeah, my bad."

Tseng keeps his head straight, his features schooled into a blank mask.

"The media will paint it as another one of AVALANCHE's terrorist attacks. Shinra will be the savior, sending in the infantry to help with rescue efforts."

"What's the expected death toll?" As soon as Reno asks the question, he throws up a hand. "No, wait, fuck it. I don't wanna fuckin' know."

He pulls the hand down his face, holds it over his mouth as he stares at Tseng's desk. Then he brings it up to cover his eyes.

"The decision's been made," Tseng reminds him. "We have a mission to do. We need to figure out how."

Reno takes a deep breath, then another. When he straightens in his seat, his face is devoid of emotion.

"Whatever. Always hated that part of town, anyway. How long have I got?"

Reno reaches for the folder, but Tseng pulls it back.

"This isn't a briefing. I called you in for a second opinion."

"My _opinion_?" Reno snorts and laces his hands together behind his head as he leans back in his chair. "Only three of us left. Too few for playin' _games_ , boss. Gotta play nice now, or that's it. Game over for what's left of us."

Tseng has always admired Reno's ability to cut straight to the heart of things. At times like these he hates it, too.

Reno beckons for the folder, and but Tseng keeps it out of his reach.

"I haven't assigned anyone to this yet."

"Oh, please. Who else you got? Can't be you. You're... the _chief_."

Reno's lips have curled into a bitter smile. He may know the truth about Veld now, but he clings to his resentment with a stubbornness he usually reserves for his enemies.

"Can't be Rude," he adds, "you need him on the bombs."

"Rude could do both. Check the emergency drop charges, then set them up and detonate."

"Nah, fuck that. Man's got family."

"This isn't a suicide mission."

Reno snorts, and Tseng realizes that that wasn't his main concern.

"Well, maybe I'll get lucky. Those AVALANCHE assholes might catch wind of this and crash the party." Reno smirks, and it looks all wrong with his lifeless eyes. "Don't worry, boss man. I'm just the heartless son of a bitch you need for this job. Everythin' a Turk should be, yo."

Tseng feels it like a punch to the gut.

He lets none of it show, and looks Reno straight in the eye as he slides the folder across his desk.


End file.
